One of the things that artists do is a study: They'll find a painting or sculpture that they love and then they make a copy of it, trying to learn the techniques that were so effective in evoking an emotion in them. My wife, in fact, has done a couple of paid studies--a chance for the patrons (as it were) to get an original painting that looked like one they appreciated and for Gayle to improve her artistic abilities. In the case of a writer, making a study is a bit different. First of all, I've no patrons to request that I type up a book that they love. On almost every level, that makes no sense. Not only would it be stupidly expensive for the product (I can type pretty fast--as much as 90 words a minute and upper 90s in accuracy when I'm really going well; if someone were to pay me by the hour to type up a 100,000 word book, it would take me probably close to 20 hours, making the book a bare minimum of $400), it would also be rather pointless. What good is a study of writing? So when a writer does this sort of emulative study, it's a personal exercise, designed to help the writer become more intimate with the prose of the preferred book. I've honestly only seen this sort of recommendation a couple of times online. That leads me to believe few people ever try this. I did. It's hard. As I've mentioned before, I'm fascinated by Stephen King's It. Despite the uninspired title and some exceptionally weird stuff (if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about), It is one of the best novels that I have ever read. I don't have a solid Top Ten list of my favorite novels (plays and poems don't count), but World War Z, Moby-Dick, and It are all on there somewhere. Maybe I'll do a listicle about my favorite novels one day. The point is, I've read the book twice in the past year, and though I don't know if I'll dedicate three weeks of next summer to reading it (It) again, I find my mind returning to Derry, Maine often enough to know that I will reread the book sometime in my future. When it came time for me to try the study of copying down another writer's book in order to better understand how s/he put the story together, the logical one for me was to start It again. Only the first chapter (I'm on page 10 out of 20 for that), because the point isn't just to go through the whole book, but to figure out what really works for the story. And there's nothing more iconic in the whole of It than the opening chapter, which dumps the reader in the aftermath of one heckuva storm in Derry, letting you see what happens to little Georgie in his yellow slicker and newspaper boat. Why is this the logical thing to do? Well, I'm still picking at the idea of writing a horror novel. I read It hoping to read a book that actually scared me (not revolted me or made me uncomfortable), as most everyone agrees that It is as scary as King has ever gone. I got something far more significant as a result of reading it, but I can't deny that there's some creepy stuff in the book. And what better thing to study than a masterpiece in the genre you want to work in? So I'm "writing" It. While I haven't even gotten to the clown yet, I do have some things that I noticed King doing. 1) King starts off establishing one of the pillars of the theme of the book, which is the passage of time and the unknowability of the future, in the very first sentence, which doesn't end until he's zoomed down into the "swollen" gutter: "The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain." The second word of the book, terror, puts the theme into its context, and though the reader (rightly) assumes that terror is referring to Pennywise, there's a thematic undertone that's quite important, that of the fear of growing old, of being part of the changing world, of the powerlessness of youth. My takeaway? The first sentence really does matter. Though King's narrator here is, presumably, Mike Hanlon, though we never get a straight answer on that front. And though I'm not normally a fan of a fully omniscient narrator (I prefer the limited, myself), this one really works. 2) King takes his time in this book, making sure that the details all line up and that we get to know little Georgie before we lose him. We learn that he's six, we learn about the importance of his brother, and a great deal of other things that all combine so that we like the kid before he gets his arm bitten off. Takeaway: Time is the best way to make a reader care about a character. The time passed with Georgie is pleasant--until it isn't--and we, as readers, are given an enjoyable time with him, brief though it is (in comparison to the rest of the book). So writing about characters that you'd want to interact with is a way of making the book engaging, and thus allowing the reduction of time on the page before the reader starts liking the characters. 3) There's something lurking on almost every page. While there are crucial world-building details--especially about the sewers--and sometime rambling tangents that a six-year-old would likely follow (their thoughts are rabbit-like, to say the least), the buildup to Georgie's death is marked with a kind of inevitable dread. King does this with phrases like "In that autumn of 1957, eight months before the real horrors began and twenty-eight years before the final showdown, Stuttering Bill was ten years old" and other drops about the impending terror. But it isn't just that he tells us it's going to be horrifying. He shows it by having Georgie, before he goes out in the rain, go down into the cellar to get some paraffin for his newspaper boat. This is an experience almost every kid has had (except those in Florida, who don't have basements): Having to go into the dark, unfinished basement to get something from the cellar. The fears that play in your mind--of being grabbed by the ankles as you walk down each step; of stretching to reach the light switch because you can't possible go down until the light is on; of the certainty that your only way to survive is to get up the stairs quickly, so fast that you're likely to stumble--are expertly crafted here. Though Georgie has some big words for a six year old (the "apotheosis of all monsters", while fitting to describe Pennywise, is a strange choice), his feelings and actions are familiar. The powerlessness of being so young returns to the reader as the section unfolds. This sort of perpetual dread haunts this opening chapter, which also serves to set the tone of the rest of the book. 4) Final takeaway: Time is elastic. This is another theme of It, but it's shown here by having the story "start" in 1957 (it will stretch backwards much further than that, as well as move forward into a timelessness by the end) with Georgie running in the rainwater. At the beginning of the second section of the chapter (King tends to number his page breaks, for some reason, at least in this book), we're watching Bill and Georgie make the boat that we saw in the first section. King will continue doing this sort of yo-yoing throughout the rest of the book, letting the parallel stories of the Losers' Club go from '58 to '85 and back again. This technique is part of how King can show what's happening to Georgie while at the same time help us care more about Georgie as we see him overcome his first grade-style fears--fears that end up being real and deadly. Okay, so this stuff may be interesting, but how does typing it help me to get it? Well, the first way I see is that it forces me to slow down. I may be able to type at almost 90 words per minute, but I can read at somewhere between four- and five hundred if I care to. By going slowly, I'm seeing how he constructs his sentences, why he makes such page-bending paragraphs, and where he throttles up and down on the details. Another way it helps is it shows me some of the tweaks that I would have done to fit my own personal style. I've learned that I use the phrase "a little" a lot, so I've excised it from almost every instance in my current project. King, who notoriously despises adverbs, is fine with "a little" and even adverbs, despite his advice to the contrary. Seeing these facets of his writing comes by going through the same motions. It may not be the only way to study a text, but it is a way. You should try it (It). ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! What are we afraid of? A few years ago, right around the time The Walking Dead hit the zeitgeist between its decaying eyes, zombies were everywhere. There were college courses taught about zombies. Books on philosophy, but through the lens of the undead, were written. Zombie modes were introduced into video games where they had no purpose. Much like having dragons on the front cover of fantasy novels, it seemed like the undead were the easiest way to part brain-dead consumers from their money. And that was all a part of it: Zombies represented--in a not-so-subtle way--the fears of our society, up to and including consumerism and the deep, often unspoken fear of our own voracity turned upon ourselves. Fears about loss of individuality, less potent now than during the Cold War, perhaps, but still a viable reflex in the American psyche, coupled with paranoia about germs, disease, and the potential of bio-warfare all combined in the perfect monster for the late-Bush, early-Obama years. But what about now? What are we afraid of now? In other words (and to take the idea from someone on Twitter whom I can't find to credit), what will the next monster be? When I think of traditional monsters who have stuck around, it's clear that they resonate with something deep and primal within a culture. Because we're a fearful species, there are a lot of things that we're afraid of. You'd think it'd be easy to consider and/or predict this, right? From my poor powers of invention, however, I find this taxing. Think, for example, of why vampires in the buttoned-up, sexually repressed and distressed Victorian Era would be so spooky--and so alluring. Dracula, in particular, has a great many aspects of the culture twisted and perverted within him. During the century in which both Frankenstein* and Dracula were born, there was a rush toward industrialization and modernity (though they didn't think of that term the way we do now), an abandoning of the past and its mores. For Frankenstein's monster, the boundary of scientific potential and where it bumps against the domain of God is a good example. For Dracula, it's the feudal lord reasserting his power and dominion into the "modern" world. Not only that, but Dracula's power set is predicated on undoing traditional Christian norms: Jesus is supposed to be the only Being who is immortal and lives forever, yet look at what the Count can do. Jesus gives His blood to us for a promise of eternal life; Dracula takes our blood for himself to gain that immortality. His hidden nature is bestial, where he can take the form of different creatures (depending on your story). The values of the society are what the monster threatens and embodies. And, though we've changed much from Victorian times, there are enough vestiges of these expectations and mores that vampires still resonate with us. Hence my question. What do we value that the monsters could corrupt? In a world where insults, innuendo, and ineptitude can win the highest office of the land, or a time where we'll mess of pottage our privacy for the convenience of a glowing screen, it's hard to see what we hold sacred enough, as a society, to be afraid of losing. I suppose the concept of individuality might be one area. Zombies challenge it very well, but we're looking for something new. The Borg would be a better fit, though I can't help but feel that's more of a cop-out, perhaps because they're too blatant. Or, rather, they're still too tightly bound up in Cold War dichotomies. We could maybe resurrect the ideas from Heinlein's The Puppet Masters. Body-theft/hijacking could fit in well with our current fears of terrorism and, well, hijacking. So maybe loss of identity? That certainly would fit. We've seen these iterations before, though, and I'm not currently seeing a lot of people on that band-wagon. What about gender? There's a lot of transphobia** in the air: What if the monster causes the person to change into the Other (whatever that may be), hijacking the identity and replacing it with something that is hated, feared, or despised? The problem I see with that is it isn't widespread enough to be considered a zeitgeist-level fear…to say nothing of the problematic undertones that sort of story/monster might engender. "Economic anxiety" is the sublimation of what happened in the fall of 2016. How could that be exploited by monsters? Bitcoin turns into Bitecoin? Nah, that's stupid. Monsterfying (not a word) economy is tricky. I think the shorthand for that is the dystopian future, particularly the post-apocalyptic type. The comforts that neoliberal capitalism provides are lost, and that's unnerving. I can't consider that as a monster, though, as that's a world-wide setting. We have a love/hate relationship with social media and technology, and while plenty of monsters utilize tech, I don't know if I'm personally sold on the idea that a monster is going to get me through a device that I can turn off or accidentally leave on a park bench. Maybe this is why Slenderman is so interesting to me: The first entirely digital boogeyman, Slenderman has his own creepypasta origins, giving him a cachet with native digital denizens. And though Slenderman has been around for a while, along with thousands of iterations in lots of media, he hasn't really hit the silver screen or entered mainstream consciousness. In fact, some of you may have to do a search to see who I'm talking about, which kind of underscores my point. Golden Age monsters had a way of promulgating. Dracula's bite could transform you into a vampire. Zombies, same thing. Werewolves are contagious. Even Frankenstein's monster wanted a wife to, as it were, "people this island with Calibans". Proliferation might be a key to this monster, and I think it would have to have a ubiquity to it. Something that people would see everywhere, to have easy imitators and a flexibility that would allow it to continue to permutate in a way that allowed for possibilities to cash in on it. Wait! I got it! A Silicon Valley startup guy. Yeah. That's the ticket.
Joking aside, I've been trying to get this idea out for a long time, and I'm still unsure. Maybe we're jaded enough, glum enough, depressed enough that there isn't anything that we fear. Dread? Maybe. Hope won't come to pass? Absolutely. But fear? I don't know. And that's worrisome. It would mean that we defeated the only thing we have to fear, and we did that through apathy. That's ending, not with a bang, but a whimper. An uninterested, bored whimper. Spooky. --- * I'm speaking of Victor here, by the way, in case you're trying to be pedantic. ** I feel like this doesn't need explaining, but just to be clear: when it comes to bigotry and prejudice, the suffix -phobia needn't mean a literal fear of the thing. It's an ending that indicates the prejudice. One can be an Islamophobia and not fear Muslims; the phrase would only show that the person has a preconceived, negative emotion toward Muslims, based upon stereotypes and bad faith arguments. Glad we cleared that up. |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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